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Leaves of Grass (1871-72)
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ETHIOPIA SALUTING THE COLORS.
( A Reminiscence of 1864.)
1
WHO are you, dusky woman, so ancient, hardly human, |
With your woolly-white and turban'd head, and bare
bony feet?
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Why, rising by the roadside here, do you the colors
greet?
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2
('Tis while our army lines Carolina's sand and pines, |
Forth from thy hovel door, thou, Ethiopia, com'st to me, |
As, under doughty Sherman, I march toward the sea.) |
3
Me, master, years a hundred, since from my parents sun-
der'd,
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A little child, they caught me as the savage beast is caught; |
Then hither me, across the sea, the cruel slaver brought . |
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4
No further does she say, but lingering all the day, |
Her high-borne turban'd head she wags, and rolls her
darkling eye,
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And curtseys to the regiments, the guidons moving by. |
5
What is it, fateful woman—so blear, hardly human? |
Why wag your head, with turban bound—yellow, red
and green?
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Are the things so strange and marvelous, you see or
have seen?
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Lo! Victress on the Peaks!
Lo! Victress on the peaks! |
Where thou, with mighty brow, regarding the world, |
(The world, O Libertad, that vainly conspired against
thee;)
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Out of its countless, beleaguering toils, after thwarting
them all;)
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Dominant, with the dazzling sun around thee, |
Flauntest now unharm'd, in immortal soundness and
bloom—lo! in these hours supreme,
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No poem proud, I, chanting, bring to thee—nor mastery's
rapturous verse;
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But a book, containing night's darkness, and blood-
dripping wounds,
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World, Take Good Notice.
WORLD, take good notice, silver stars fading, |
Milky hue ript, weft of white detaching, |
Coals thirty-eight, baleful and burning, |
Scarlet, significant, hands off warning, |
Now and henceforth flaunt from these shores. |
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